Opinion & Commentary

The query came from Jim Romensko, who covers media across the country: “Hi Patti, I’m checking to see how Colorado news outlets are responding to the relaxed marijuana law. Have you screened new hires in the past? If so, will you hire journalists who smoke marijuana on their own time…

“Does the GOP have a death wish?” That’s what former congressman, former gubernatorial candidate and longtime rabble-rouser Tom Tancredo asks, in the wake of a number of Republicans signing off last week on the Colorado Compact on Immigration. Tancredo, who left the Rrepublican Party to run for governor in 2010,…

If the world doesn’t come to an end on December 21, it could be the start of very big things for PeaceJam. “We’re an overnight success story…seventeen years later,” says Ivan Suvanjieff. Actually, he got the idea for PeaceJam almost twenty years ago, during Denver’s so-called Summer of Violence, in…

The lights went on outside the Lowenstein yesterday — ten hours after we published a post about frustrated business owners who’d had been kept in the dark about the status of the “enhanced transit corridor”” project along East Colfax Avenue. But shortly after 6 p.m., we got the word from…

Businesses along a stretch of East Colfax Avenue have been in the dark about why, well, they were still in the dark last week – months after a new lighting project had started on the street, as part of a package of city improvements to “create an enhanced transit corridor.”…

A week after John Hickenlooper signed Amendment 64 into law, and four days after President Barack Obama said that the feds have bigger fish to fry than prosecuting recreational users of pot in states that have made it legal, Colorado’s Task Force on the Implementation of Amendment 64 will have…

Pardon our dust! Exactly a year ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a complicated land swap at the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge — the former nuclear weapons plant, minus several hundred acres too contaminated to go public — that would expand the refuge to the west in…

All those outdoor fireplaces at the big-box stores look like they’d make great holiday gifts — but not for Denver residents. Because outdoor fires are banned here, unless they’re used for cooking. One fire-loving Platt Park couple learned that last winter, when they were huddled around their backyard chiminea and…

The situation was stupid enough that Ken Salazar probably wanted to punch someone. When the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was unveiled in 2011, eagle-eyed wordsmiths quickly pointed out that one of the quotes etched into the granite monument had taken King’s words out of context, making him seem like…

The Backseat Budgeter, our Best of Denver 2011 winner for Best Way to Understand the Budget, is back — and just in time. Mayor Michael Hancock’s push for the passage of 2A last month — a deBrucing that allows the city to retain extra money collected — resulted in an…

When John Hickenlooper addressed the Democratic National Convention in early September, he emphasized how Coloradans could overcome party differences to collaborate — unlike Congress. And Coloradans offered an impressive display of collaboration yesterday, when former Senator Hank Brown, a Republican, and Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, unveiled the Colorado Compact…

With all the bad news about media layoffs, here’s a real reason to celebrate: Tonight, the Open Media Foundation will celebrate six years of independent voices on Denver Open Media — which not only runs Denver’s public-access channels on Comcast, but also provides training and services for non-profits and kids…

Last week, the mayor’s office confirmed that Fuqua Development and its capital partner, the Lionstone Group, were negotiating with King Soopers regarding the anchor retail spot in a revised development plan for the former CU Health Sciences Center property at East Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. What went unsaid is…

Travel guru Arthur Frommer predicts big 2013 tourism gains for six disparate destinations: Miami Beach, Dubai, India and Lima, Peru, plus Seattle and Denver. Why are the last two so hot? Pot, of course…

Update: Denver City Council made some history last night when it approved changes to the city’s landmark ordinance. Today, the Department of Community Planning and Development Community Planning and Development finished the job by raising the landmark application fee from $250 to $875…

Ken Foster, author of I’m a Good Dog, didn’t plan on making a stop in Denver. “But as the book’s publication date approached, I began to see how much the book meant to people who love their dogs,” Foster told us. “And it felt like an oversight not to do…

Has Colorado’s official tourism effort gone to pot? A new video posted on YouTube suggests that, and it only makes sense: After all, not only did the state’s voters approve Amendment 64, which makes recreational pot use legal in Colorado, but the state tourism office just hosted meetings on agritourism…

Late on November 6, after Coloradans had voted overwhelmingly to legalize recreational use of marijuana, Governor John Hickenlooper warned that given federal law, the state’s residents shouldn’t “break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.” But that very day, as it turns out, another Coloradan had taken aim at one…